George A. Crofutt. American Progress. Chromolithograph, ca. 1873, after an 1872 painting by John Gast. Popular Graphic Arts Collection. Prints and Photographs Division.
LC-USZC4-668.full caption | bibliographic record

American women on the move--test line--. The picture that comes to mind for most Anglo-Americans when women are discussed
in the context of historical travels to California is that of the overland wagon trains moving westward, peopled by sturdy
and daring pioneers who arrived in California after the discovery of gold in 1848. A few might also mention that some of the
women came by ship, interrupting their voyage with an arduous trek—on foot or by mule—across the Isthmus of Panama, all the
while with small children in tow. Even fewer people are aware that these women were relative latecomers to the Golden State,
as California came to be known.

At the time Anglo-Americans began arriving in California in large numbers during the nineteenth century, they were part of
the third wave of migration to the Pacific Coast. The first immigrants were Indians who had lived in California ten to fifteen
thousand years before the region was visited by Old World explorers.1 A prevalent myth that the rich land was empty, ripe for colonization, is refuted by recent studies indicating that “at the
time of Euro-American contact, California was more densely populated than any area of equal size in North America, north of
central Mexico . . . . What is labeled ‘wilderness’ in today's popular imagination . . . harbored human gathering and hunting
sites, burial grounds, work sites, sacred areas, trails, and village sites. Today's wilderness was then human homeland.”2

Our understanding of the California Indians is limited by the absence of written cultural artifacts, except for a few drawings
on cave or canyon walls, and is further hampered by a lack of understanding of the ecology of California's landscape before
European contact, which took place over several centuries. A map produced by August Wilhelm Kuchler, Natural Vegetation of California (Lawrence, Kans., 1977; G4361.D2 1977 .K8), in the Geography and Map Division, provides the best information available at
this time regarding the native vegetation as it existed before the arrival of Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in
1542.

What is clear, however, is that the Indians altered the physical environment through planting, pruning, irrigating, and periodically
burning vegetation and that Indian women played a major and very specific role in these activities.3 Approximately five hundred loosely affiliated Indian groups, or “tribelets,” have been identified. Although new information
about Indian life in California is emerging, the story of the their journeys has yet to be told.4

There is, however, an abundance of written source material about the second wave of immigrants who settled the borderlands
in the northernmost portion of the Spanish empire. Incursions by the British and Russians, and the fear that others might
attempt to claim areas of the North American continent, motivated Spain to create a strong military and human presence along
the California coast. Between 1769 and 1821, twenty missions, four presidios (forts), and three civil communities known as
pueblos were built, stretching from San Diego to just north of San Francisco.5

From the beginning, families were sent to these outposts for the express purpose of increasing the population of Spanish citizens.
In addition to the relatively few people who could be considered Hispanic, having been born in Spain or of solely Spanish
ancestry, the vast majority of the colonists came from Mexico, where some of their families had lived for at least two generations.
Included were many mestizos who were part Native American and part Spanish or Mexican and mulattoes and blacks.6 California, already populated by multiple Native American cultural groups, with the arrival of these newer immigrants became
a model of diversity that continues to the present day.

Among the best documented expeditions in North American history are the two overland journeys led by Juan Bautista de Anza
in 1774 and 1775. How colonists from the Spanish provinces of Sinaloa and Sonora in what is now Mexico migrated as families
to the San Francisco Bay area—traveling from the Tubac garrison on Sonora's northern frontier; traversing the Sonoran desert,
the treacherous Gila and Colorado Rivers, and rugged mountain ranges; and then moving up California's Central Valley—is one
of the most amazing and least known stories in American history.7

Anza established for the first time an overland route across the desert, connecting established portions of New Spain with
the California outposts, six hundred miles of which required blazing a new trail. His first expedition in 1774 transported
forty soldiers, twelve women, and several children. By the time he returned to Monterrey, Mexico, to report his success to
his superiors, he had covered over two thousand miles.8

The opening of the trail, which was maintained by preserving friendly relations with the Indians in its vicinity, and a continuing
need for settlers to protect Spanish interests in the region, led to his most stunning success—shepherding 240 men, women,
and children, including seven infants under the age of eight months, across the desert and up the California coast.

The expedition left Tubac on October 23, 1775. Winter came unusually early that year; it was unseasonably cold with a record-breaking
amount of snow and ice and the colonists, used to the warm climate of Mexico, were unprepared for the hardships they faced.
Rations were short, finding potable water was difficult, people and livestock sickened, and many of the animals weakened or
died.9

Despite the adverse conditions, Anza arrived at Monterey, California, with two more people than he had enlisted for the long
journey to Alta California, three of whom were born on the trail. He lost only one person the entire trip, a mother of six,
Señora Felix, who died in childbirth the first night. All of the rest of the party, including the newborns, survived.10 Such a successful outcome overland to California was never equaled—before, during, or after the Gold Rush—and had the thirteen
diaries penned on his two expeditions been written in English rather than Spanish, Anza would today be known throughout the
world as a famous leader and the names of the remarkable women who traveled with him would be remembered.

Although none of the women traveling north from Mexico left written journals of their thoughts, feelings, and experiences
on the trail, fascinating vignettes can be extracted from the diaries kept by the men who accompanied them. For example, we
know that, because the primary purpose of the 1775 expedition was to populate Spanish California, Anza actively recruited
young married couples and that three marriages took place along the way. Recruitment of suitable colonists from among the
poorer Mexican families was influenced by the ideal of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century womanhood. Spanish expectations
for women were by and large those that crossed national and cultural lines: westering women were to be pious, pure, domestic,
and modest, whether they were English, French, or Spanish-Mexican.11 There were, however, some exceptions to the general patterns of behavior and family composition expected of all women regardless
of their social class.

The women who accompanied Anza were primarily from the lower classes of Mexican society. One of them, Maria Feliciana Arballo,
who was born in Spain, was only twenty years old when she and her mestizo husband signed on to travel with Anza. In part,
the journey to California helped them to escape the rigid class society in established parts of the Spanish empire that denigrated
her husband on the basis of color and race. His sudden death did not deter her from insisting that she and her two young daughters
be permitted to accompany Anza to California. Perhaps the persuasiveness of her arguments convinced Anza, despite strong objections
from Father Pedro Font, to make an exception to his policy that all women be accompanied by male family members. She and her
daughters, one riding in front of her, the other behind, traveled on horseback all the way to California. Once there, she
again asserted her independence by leaving the group in San Gabriel, where she entered into a second marriage. The man she
chose was also a mestizo soldier.12

Apparently Arballo was a high-spirited young woman, because Father Font was repeatedly annoyed with her and with Anza, who
had permitted her to go to California against the priest's adamant opposition. He confided in his diary, as translated and
published by Herbert Eugene Bolton, that she drank alcohol to excess one evening when the group was celebrating, having completed
an arduous portion of the journey. Font noted her unseemly behavior, commenting that the “very bold widow . . . sang some
verses which were not at all nice, applauded and cheered by the crowd.”13 She refused to play the submissive and modest role required of women of her time and, by performing in public, she resisted
the social controls normally governing Spanish women's actions. She also defied, not once but twice, the class and color constraints
of Hispanic culture by marrying common soldiers who were mestizo when she herself was of Spanish birth. In marrying beneath
her class and caste, defying her priest's advice, resisting male authority, and acting boldly in the public sphere, she subverted
the gender requirements of proper behavior for Hispanic women of her time.14

At the highest end of the social spectrum, although not a member of Anza's party, was Eulalia Callis, born in Spain to an
influential family. She became the wife of Alta California governor Pedro Fages. Despite her prominent position, she made
private matters public in 1785 by openly accusing her husband of infidelity and refusing to sleep with him; in addition, she
insisted on returning to Mexico City. The governor denied any wrongdoing and their priest advised her, when she consulted
him about a divorce, to drop the matter. She refused to do so, and she was punished for her actions by imprisonment, isolation,
the continual threat of flogging, and excommunication from the Church. Although her contemporaries were unsympathetic, Callis's
actions in retrospect appear to have been motivated by a strong survival instinct for she had endured four pregnancies in
six years, buried two of her children, and longed, understandably, to return to a safer and more comfortable life in Mexico
City.15

“The Winter of 1849.” Color engraving by J. H. Baillard after a drawing by Frank Marryat. From Marryat's Mountains and Molehills (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855; F865.M3 1855b). Rare Book and Special Collections Division.full caption | full item

Notably successful in exercising her independence was a third woman, Apolinaria Lorenzana, who arrived on the ship Concepcion with her widowed mother. In keeping with Spanish norms, which were clearly stated in the context of sending ten female foundlings
to California in 1800, Señorita Lorenzana was supposed to marry and bear children to bolster the population of the northern
borderlands of the Spanish empire.16 She never acquiesced in doing either, despite a proposal from a young Californian. Her strategy for avoiding marriage, “because
I was not particularly inclined toward that state even though I knew the merits of that sacred institution,” was to perform
valued work by cooking, nursing, and caring for the Native Americans who lived near the mission. “La Beata” was respected,
admired, and loved for her life of service, and thus maintained control of her own sexuality and lived a life of independence,
supporting herself by working for the Church. Her efforts resulted in her being one of very few women in California to receive
a land grant in her own name.17

Source material for studying Anza's expeditions, Spanish California (1769-1821), and the Mexican period (1822-46) is available
in a variety of formats at the Library of Congress. Although the original manuscript diaries are in Mexico, with additional
copies in the archives of Seville and Madrid, the Manuscript Division has multiple copies of Anza material for those willing
to translate them; they can be accessed by using several published and unpublished finding aids.18 Photographic reproductions of manuscripts and transcripts of the original materials in English and Spanish, bilingual published
editions of primary source material, and translations of varying quality of the records associated with Anza are also in the
Library's collections.19 Examples of information related to women's history contained in these works includes census data on the members of the 1775
expedition, including names, ages, marital status, and the number of male and female children per family, and detailed lists
of supplies and provisions that Anza procured for each man, woman, and child, including articles of clothing.20

In addition to the materials published by Bolton from Spanish and Mexican archives, copious sources supporting studies of
women in Pre-Conquest California are available in several Library of Congress collections. The earliest written observations
and visual images of California women were recorded by travelers and traders who visited the area before the Mexican War (1846-48).
Contemporary American and foreign published accounts of that period are housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division,
including works by Frenchman Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, who was there in 1786, and Russian Louis Choris,
whose 1822 publication included drawings made in 1816 of California Indians (see page 218).21

“Encampment at Sac City, Nov. 1849: My Own Tent.” Lithograph by G. W. Lewis after a drawing by G. V. Cooper. From J. M. Letts, California Illustrated including a Description of the Panama and Nicaragua Routes by a Returned Californian (New York: William Holdredge, 1852; F865.L65). Rare Book and Special Collections Division.full caption | full item

“Emigrant Party on the Road to California.” Color engraving. Frontispiece to California: Its Past History, Its Present Position, Its Future Prospects (London, 1850; F865.C14). Rare Book and Special Collections Division.full caption | bibliographic record

Life in California: During a Residence of Several Years in that Territory . . . By an American, recorded Alfred Robinson's views of Indian gendered roles. “They [the men] passed their time in play, and roaming about from
house to house, dancing and sleeping and this was their only occupation . . . The women were obliged to gather seeds in the
fields, prepare them for cooking, and to perform all the meanest offices as well as the most laborious. It was painful in
the extreme, to behold them with the infants, hanging upon their shoulders, groping about in search of herbs and seed.”22

Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s extremely popular Two Years before the Mast, published in 1840, included observations that he made in July 1835 while visiting California. His views were influential
in shaping American attitudes in the eastern United States toward the Hispanic-mestizo population of the Southwest. “The men
are thriftless, proud, and extravagant, and very much given to gaming; and the women have but little education, and a good
deal of beauty, and their morality, of course, is none the best; yet the instances of infidelity are much less frequent than
one would at first suppose . . . . The women have but little virtue, but then the jealousy of their husbands is extreme and
their revenge deadly and almost certain.”23 His writing added to growing expressions of Anglo-Saxon superiority and belief in “Manifest Destiny” in the years leading
up to the American conquest of California.

The Geography and Map Division has both contemporary cartographic material, including manuscript maps, and more recent thematic
maps showing the extent of the Spanish empire, the routes taken by Anza and other Spanish explorers, the sites of presidios,
pueblos, and missions, and the topography and geology of Alta California. Particularly useful for providing orientation to
the Spanish Empire in North America is Mapa, que comprende la Frontera, de los Dominos del Ray . . . , drawn by Joseph Urruta and Nicolas LaFora in 1769. A large and detailed map, it is the product of the 1766-68 expedition
to survey presidios and defenses of northern New Spain, and shows administrative boundaries and selected European and Native
American towns and settlements on the eve of the founding of Spain's first colony in Alta California in 1769.24

In addition, there are many secondary works devoted to history and culture of the Spanish and Mexican eras of Alta California
and individual communities in formats including monographs, bibliographies, journal articles, and doctoral dissertations.
Subject headings that identify this material include “California-History-to 1846.”

The great watershed in California history began with the American conquest of the Mexican province, followed almost immediately
by the discovery of gold in 1848, widespread immigration in the rush to the goldfields, and California's admission to the
Union in 1850. Socially, economically, and demographically, California became unrecognizable almost overnight as San Francisco
changed from a small town to a bustling port (see page 220) and mining camps and villages sprang up all along the eastern
slopes of the Sierras.

Demographic information about women is helpful in understanding the magnitude of the social revolution. Census averages by
locality are available for the age of married couples, the age difference between married partners, and the number of children
per family in 1790, and can be used as a baseline of comparison for the period after 1850. Equally informative are statistics
that reveal the relatively large numbers of male to female inhabitants, peaking at a ratio of twelve men to one woman in 1850.
The number of foreign-born residents of both sexes also increased dramatically. Defining those born outside the United States
(and outside California, before it became a state) as “foreign,” the number of foreign women increased from 19 to 28 percent
between 1850 and 1860, whereas the figure for men for the same period jumped from 24 to 43 percent.25

Both American and foreign immigrants added to the diversity and complexity that already existed in California society. Several
mulatto families had traveled to California with Anza, and intermarriage between races was so frequent that the racial classification
system in colonial New Spain was highly formalized—including terms such as “castizo” and “morisco.” One scholar has noted
that “approximately 55 percent of the Spanish-speaking population in California in 1790 was of mixed heritage” and 20 percent
may have possessed some African ancestry.26

Forty-niners were drawn to the goldfields from all around the globe.27 Of particular interest—because the Asian population of North America before the Gold Rush was extremely low—are the number
of immigrants from China who sailed to Northern California within a narrow time span, creating a unique community there. Relatively
few Chinese women immigrated: in 1890, there were 69,382 Chinese men in California and 3,090 women.28 San Francisco customhouse records for 1852 show that 20,026 Chinese arrived by sea that year; soon thereafter the city's
Chinatown included Chinese girls imported for prostitution, many of whom had been sold by impoverished parents or simply stolen
off the streets in China.29

The vast majority of men and women on the move to California during the Gold Rush, however, came from east of the Mississippi
River. Many of them had already relocated once in their lifetimes to the old northwest, leaving for California from small
farms in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Others, including Mrs. D. B. Bates, the wife of a sea captain who had three ships burn
under her during her voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco, departed from the eastern seaboard.30 Those whose journey overland consisted of crossing the Isthmus of Panama wrote in detail about their novel experiences, including
riding astride mules, sometimes wearing men's clothing, sleeping on the ground or in Indian huts, and their horror at being
served baked monkey for dinner. For some it was an adventure, for others an excruciating ordeal.31

Although the story of the trip overland from the east is well known to most, recent scholarship has helped us to understand
more about the social and psychological effects of being uprooted from their homes and how life on the trail affected women.
Lillian Schlissel has identified and analyzed almost one hundred diaries and journals kept by women moving west in the decades
between 1840 and 1870.32 These sources provide remarkable insight into the lives and values of the authors and how they perceived themselves and the
times in which they were living. Many of the titles used when women's diaries were published reflect the perspectives of the
writers as well as their hardships and experiences. To the Land of Gold and Wickedness: The 1848-59 Diary of Lorena L. Hays (St. Louis, Mo.: Patrice Press, 1988; F593 H36 1988) and “I Hear the Hogs in My Kitchen”: A Woman's View of the Gold Rush by Mary B. Ballou (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962; F865.B2 1962) are examples.

Both first and subsequent editions of these kinds of publications, including many contemporary reports of life on the overland
trail, voyages around Cape Horn or via the Isthmus of Panama, and living conditions in the cities, towns, and goldfields,
can be found in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division and in the General Collections, especially in local history
and genealogy materials.

The Music Division's sheet music collection contains works such as the well-known “O My Darling Clementine” and the relatively
obscure “Emigrant's Dying Child,” a particularly poignant piece about a father's loss of first his wife and then two small
children on the trail to the goldfields.33 Newspaper accounts include material on women and life in California and can be found in publications from around the globe.
The San Francisco newspapers, particularly Alta California, contain news about the political and social life in San Francisco, including reports of events in and around the gold mining
towns.

Cartographic materials, contemporary and thematic, provide information about the routes taken by the wagon trains, the places
from which the migrants originated, the locations of mining towns and other places in California, and the first official map
of the state authorized by the state legislature.

These sources provide different perspectives from which to explore social, economic, and gender-related topics. Most of the
works related to the California Gold Rush and the fortyniners can be accessed by using the subject heading “California Gold
Discoveries.” in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

In her comprehensive work Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, Schlissel points out that the decision to move west was generally made by male members of the family and was only reluctantly
accepted by women. The difference between men and their wives in their willingness to go to California was related to the
life cycles of men and women: men were in the most active phases of their lives and were eager to break free and take whatever
risk might make them wealthy. If their search for gold proved unsuccessful, they could obtain land and resume farming. The
majority of the women, however, were in their childbearing years and at a stage in their lives where they wanted to put down
roots and enjoy a sense of community and the company of other women and their families; many went to California reluctantly.34

The long journey to California exacerbated tensions in marriages, and women exercised their options in California when it
came to seeking divorce. There was a lengthy list of grounds upon which an action could be based, including “natural impotence,
minority, adultery, extreme cruelty, habitual intemperance, desertion, willful neglect, consent obtained by force or fraud,
and conviction for a felony.”35

Despite obvious differences between the women who traveled with Anza and the Anglo-American women when it came to divorce,
there were many similarities in two waves of migration. Women in both groups experienced birth, miscarriages, and death; few
females traveled outside of their family unit; there were hardships, deprivation, and continual exposure to extremes in temperature
and weather conditions; and the women were expected to cook, wash the clothing, nurse the sick, and carry and tend to their
children.

The degree to which they suffered, however, was dramatically different. Those traveling westward in the mid-nineteenth century
lacked the cohesion and leadership found in the Anza expeditions. Attempted shortcuts and turnoffs on the trail resulted in
disasters such as the one suffered by the Donner party.36 In addition, cholera was rampant and the way became lined with the graves of those who had died from measles, dysentery,
smallpox, and fevers. Infant mortality played a significant role in the loss of life, and contaminated water and spoiled food
contributed to the overall misery and deaths of others. One diarist, Cecelia McMillen Adams, morbidly recorded over two hundred
grave sites along the trail from Illinois in 1852.37

Superior planning, including blazing the trail that was taken and properly equipping the participants, in addition to specific
recruitment of persons deemed most suitable for the journey and life on the frontier, were advantages of the Spanish experience
over that of Anglo-Americans on the westward trail. While the Anza expedition was a small and relatively cohesive group, the
forty-niners were an amorphous collection of thousands of individuals and families that lacked leadership and experience on
the difficult journey west. With the exception of the evening when Father Font was critical of Anza's decision to provide
liquor for the fandango rather than say prayers of thanksgiving, and the young widow entertained the group with her bawdy
song, conflict among the Spanish leaders and rank and file was expressed primarily by writing in personal journals. Compared
to the tales of crime and punishment that took place along the trail of the forty-niners, the Anza group was peaceful and
well disciplined.38

Spanish success in California was short-lived, however, as the outpost of empire fell first to the Mexicans and then to the
Americans. In the span of eighty years, the days of Hispanic supremacy were over as the American government implemented Manifest
Destiny and solidified its conquest by changing property laws, including those that had enabled women to inherit, own, buy,
and sell land, and that permitted them to enjoy the profits made in the course of a marriage through community property. Despite
prolonged litigation, most Hispanic landowners eventually lost their holdings, large and small, and the process of marginalization
of those not of Anglo ancestry began. Increasingly isolated by language and culture, the people of Spanish and Mexican extraction,
and those of African origin, as well as the original Californians—the Native Americans—moved into the economic and social
shadows. Perhaps new studies of the earliest residents of the Golden State will return strong, independent women such as Maria
Feliciana Arballo, Eulalia Callis, and Apolinaria Lorenzana to their rightful place in a widened mainstream of American history.